


there is no terminus, only suitcases

by dirtybinary



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-11-21 20:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 6,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11365032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/pseuds/dirtybinary
Summary: A collection of stucky-centric tumblr ficlets of varying lengths from 2015 and 2016, tidied up and compiled for posterity.





	1. Chapter 1

**anonymous sent: stucky 46  
** _“Hey, have you seen the...? Oh.”_

 

Considering that the hands of the wall clock are semaphoring five-thirty in the morning, there should _really_ not be so much noise coming from the balcony.

Steve fancies himself a reasonable, tolerant person. Now that he’s no longer living alone, there are always noises coming from one odd corner of the house or another, noises that would have made him jump a year ago but no longer do. The hiss and slither of Natasha’s ball python, Therapy Snake. The bang of the door as Natasha herself returns from one of her mysterious after-dark errands. (“I’m not a spy today, Steve, I can make noise if I want, and what do you mean you were asleep? You’re an artist, you’re supposed to keep artist hours, not go to bed at ten-thirty.”) The beat of metallic wings, followed by the thud of running feet on the roof, occasionally punctuated by cursing. (“Those magpies were not fucking around, Steve, stop laughing and help me _oh my god_.”)

The trouble is that Sam and Natasha are supposed to be in Bangkok this week, having a belated honeymoon-but-not-really-I-mean-is-it-a-honeymoon-if-we’re-not-really-married? And when Steve pads into his bathroom, thinking he might as well brush his teeth and go for an early run now that he’s up, he realises that his toothbrush has vanished.

This would be annoying in the daytime. At an ungodly hour like _right now_ , it’s preposterous.

Steve storms towards the balcony. “Sam, have you seen my toothbrush? Or Nat, or whoever you guys invited into my house, because I sure as hell didn’t say you could borrow my—”

He stops dead on the threshold of the balcony. With all his ex-showman eloquence, he says, “Oh.”

Bucky Barnes—former dead man, part-time ghost—is crouched on the balcony, his sniper rifle set up on its tripod and pointed somewhere down the street. What Steve can see of him is approximately one part unwashed hair to three parts menace. It would be an alarming sight, if Bucky wasn’t also contorted into some kind of weird yoga pose in an attempt to reach the grooves on the back of his cybernetic bicep. With Steve’s toothbrush. 

“Awkward,” says Steve. Because, really, the last time they’d met, Bucky had been screaming and trying to beat his face in.

Bucky doesn’t so much as blink. Neither does he relinquish the toothbrush. “I need to shoot the guy that lives across the street,” he says in his creaky, disturbingly uninflected rasp. “Hydra. I promise. So I need your balcony. And later you gotta help me bury the body.”

“O… kay?”

“And my arm’s got sand in it. So.”

Bucky waves the toothbrush in an almost-sheepish, almost-apologetic gesture. Steve knuckes the bridge of his nose. He wants to cry, or laugh, or do both at the same time, but it’s too early in the morning for hysterical reunions. He hasn’t even gone for his run, for fuck’s sake.

“You better buy me a new brush,” he says at last. He stomps over and plops himself down at the rifle scope. “Shove over, lemme see this Hydra neighbour.”

 

* * *

 

 **anonymous sent: B-but I'm so deep in prompt 46, if you have any time for it, what happened when they actually had to go bury the body?**  

 

“We should say a few words,” says Bucky, hunkered over his shovel. 

Steve eyes him across the hopefully inconspicuous, not-at-all-fishy patch of disturbed soil in his former neighbour’s backyard. He’s sweating. They both are. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

Bucky holds his gaze in that unnerving way of his, as if to say, _The Winter Soldier does not joke._ “You should say a few words,” he clarifies, after a moment. “You do that. You’re good at words.”

“Buck, this ain’t a bloody funeral.”

“Yeah? We put a body in the ground.”

Steve lowers his voice, glancing around the yard for spies. “Belonging to a guy we literally just _murdered_. If we don’t get out of here now someone’s gonna call the cops.”

“No one calls the cops on Captain America,” says Bucky. Looking at him is a bit like trying to out-stare an owl. “Go on. Say some words. Betcha never said words over me when I died.” 

Steve opens his mouth. Bucky’s lips twitch. _I’m fucking with you, Stevie_ , his eyes say; and God, they’ve only been reunited for an hour and already Steve is learning to decipher every micro-expression that flits across his face. “That’s not fair,” he says. “Whatever. What do I even say? Uh, here lies Mr. Gregory Jones, in a stinky burlap sack head-first in a shallow grave—sorry about that, Greg—”

“—but not really,” Bucky amends.

“Yeah, not at all. Uh, Buck here shot you in the hindbrain ‘cause you were spying on me for Hydra. Hope it didn’t hurt too much—”

“—but at least a little,” says Bucky.

“Yeah, or a lot,” says Steve. “I mean, what the hell, man. Sam even made you a casserole when you moved in.” 

“Hope you like your grave,” says Bucky. “It’s a nice one. I’m good at digging graves,” he adds, in a confiding aside to Steve.

“I don’t want to ask,” says Steve. He steps back from the totally not suspicious grave and kicks some dead leaves over it. “Gotta go, Greg. You will be missed. Except not. Bye.”

 

* * *

 

 **yetanotherobsessivereader** **sent: No. 30. Stucky, of course :). Thanks!  
**_“It’s not what it looks like.”_

 

“Um,” says Steve. He tries to push his hair out of his eyes, a nervous habit he picked up during catastrophic dates back in the thirties. It doesn’t work so well now that he no longer has a fringe. “This isn’t what it looks like?”

“I’m,” says Sam. “I’m actually not very sure what it looks like, man.”

Steve looks around the bathroom. It’s a panoramic study in disasterology. Exhibit A: the enormous pile of firearms on the rug, including a long-range sniper rifle that Steve is in the midst of taking apart to clean. Exhibit B: the pair of shovels leaning against the counter, trailing soil and stray blades of grass all across the wet floor. Exhibit C: the dirt caked on his own clothes and under his fingernails, and beneath that, suspicious stains that are most definitely _not_ dried blood.

Not to forget Exhibit D: one Winter Soldier, naked in the bathtub and up to his chin in lavender bath foam, scrubbing out the grooves in his metal arm with a look of ferocious concentration and the sorry remains of what had, up till recently, been a perfectly good toothbrush.

A tousled auburn head pokes over Sam’s shoulder. “Like they just killed a man?” Natasha suggests. Wary lines ripple across her forehead.

“Nope,” says Steve, plastering on his best Boy Scout smile. “Not at all. Why would you say that?”

From under the bubbles, Bucky makes a soft strangled sound. His large, expressionless eyes are fixed on Natasha; specifically, on the small scaly head poking out from under her jacket collar. “Snake,” he creaks, monosyllabic in the presence of unexpected company. “Yours?” 

“Yeah,” says Natasha, looking uncharacteristically disoriented. “Don’t worry. She’s not venomo—”

“Cute,” says Bucky. The fingers of his flesh hand open and close in a vague petting motion. His eyes, if possible, have grown even rounder. “Introduce me? Later.”

Natasha smiles. Almost imperceptibly, the taut lines of her shoulders relax. “Okay,” she says. “When you’re decent.”

She disappears again, and Bucky returns to his solemn brushing, leaving Sam and Steve staring at each other. “Uh,” says Steve, still groping around for an explanation. He gestures at the tub. “I think he’s… moving in?”

Sam sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “I figured.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **yetanotherobsessivereader sent: Ooh! For the drabble, no. 17 please and thanks :)**   
>  _“Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while.”_

 “Well,” says Steve. “It looks like we’re stuck.”

The stranger glowers at the locked door. Then he glowers at Steve, which is frankly unnecessary. In the half-darkness of the Arts & Design stairwell, his pigeon-blue eyes—what Steve can see of them through the rockstar shag he has for hair, anyway—are so pale they are almost bioluminescent. “Great. Class’s probably started by now.”

Steve is pretty sure Colour and Composition 201 will have  _ ended _ by the time the janitor finds his keys and unlocks the stairwell door, but the stranger—his classmate?—looks so annoyed he decides it’s in his best interest not to say so. “We were gonna be late anyway.”

“Oh?” says the stranger. “Were we? Nah, I don’t think so, not till someone was like, _I know, let’s take this shortcut my ninja spy friend told me about, it’ll shave five minutes off the walk and we’ll get to class right on the bell_ —” 

“You didn’t have to come with me,” says Steve, affronted. He would totally have gotten them to class on time, except that Natasha somehow forgot to mention that the stairwell doors in the Arts blocks only opened from the outside, and really, he’s not to blame for their college’s shitty architecture. “Break the door down if you’re that desperate, you’ve got the shoulders to pull it off.”

The stranger looks down at his own shoulders, baffled. He wiggles them a little. “It’s only our second day of college and you’re already talking about destroying school property?”

“Then we’ll just have to wait for the janitor,” says Steve. He drops his satchel and plunks himself down on the steps. This could be worse. At least he has 86% phone battery, a decent 4G connection, and a cute art history major to keep him company. “Name’s Steve. What’s yours?

The stranger stares at Steve, incredulous, as if he’s just been asked for his credit card information. “Or,” says Steve hastily, “I could just call you Shoulders. That’s what I’ve been calling you in my head anyway. I just didn’t want to objectify you without your explicit permission.”

The corners of the stranger’s lips twitch. After a brief hesitation, he comes over and sits down next to Steve. “Bucky,” he says. “It’s Bucky. And if you want to objectify me, my best feature's really my hair.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **anonymous sent: Stucky #5 please!!**   
>  _“Wait a minute. Are you jealous?”_

 “Bucky,” says Steve. “That _thing_ is on my half of the bed.” 

Bucky doesn’t look up. Neither does the amorphous blob of black fuzz currently enthroned on Steve’s favourite pillow. The only sound in the room is a faint purring that might be coming from the blob, or maybe Bucky’s arm; Steve isn’t sure. “She’s not a thing, punkass,” says Bucky, with the sort of reverent awe Steve usually expects to hear in places of worship, or neonatal wards. “Her name’s Helen.”

“ _Helen_ is on my pillow. She’s shedding.”

“Helen of Troy,” says Bucky, as if he hasn’t heard. “Because she’s got a face to launch a thousand ships. Don’t you, darling?” His voice goes up an octave. “Don’t you, sugar? You start any wars lately?”

The blob uncurls. Helen of Troy favours Bucky with a disdainful look and starts licking one of her hind paws. Bucky makes a squeaky cooing noise, and Steve gazes at him in horror. “Bucky, I’m asthmatic.”

“Nice try,” says Bucky. He rolls over to lie across the bed, his limbs diabolically arranged to take up as much space as possible. Lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, he tells the kitten, “Don’t worry, babe. I haven’t heard a wheeze out of him in eighty years or so. He’s just jealous.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **anonymous sent: Stucky 26?**   
>  _“I got you a present.”_

 “I got you a present,” says Bucky.

Nowadays, this sort of proclamation is cause for mild alarm. With the one exception of Hades (the fat white rabbit they picked out together for Steve’s last birthday, because Steve “looked lonely” and rabbits were the one animal he hadn’t been allergic to as a child), Bucky’s gifts tend to be inexplicable offerings of pointy objects and loud explosions. Steve looks up from his tablet, wary. “Is it a grenade launcher?” 

“No,” says Bucky.

In the months since Bucky’s unheralded reappearance on his doorstep, Steve has become an expert in telling apart his four facial expressions and three tones of voice. Today he sounds tentative, even shy. “Well,” says Steve. “Let’s see it, then.” 

Bucky drops an unmarked paper bag on Steve’s bed without comment, and continues to loom over him like a stone gargoyle. Steve peeks into the bag, and then—when nothing seems to be breathing or moving in it—dumps its contents into his lap. “Paints?”

“Yeah,” says Bucky. After an interminable silence, he points to Steve’s shield, propped up between the nightstand and Hades’s hutch. “Dents. Scratches.”

Their conversations are always circular and unrevelatory. This is nothing new. “Uh-huh,” says Steve.

Bucky sighs. With an air of extreme tolerance, he explains, “From our fight. On the helicarrier.”

“Oh,” says Steve. And then, clutching the paints to his chest, _"Oh."_

“Yup,” says Bucky.

He squats down next to the hutch and makes a soft humming noise at Hades, who is very large, very furry, and—all deities be praised—has recently had her nails trimmed. She makes a vaguely malevolent rustle in response. Bucky ruffles her fur, and then, evidently satisfied, retreats from the room without another word. 

“He never ruffles  _ my _ hair,” Steve tells Hades, scowling. “Why is that?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **sonatine sent: stucky + 22 for the ask game**   
>  _Prompt 22: “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”_

“You hate me now,” says Steve.

Bucky can only stare. Their privacy is circumscribed, and he doesn't know what to say.  They are surrounded by the subdued murmur of the remnant of the 107th, milling sluggishly in the near-empty mess hall, and rain drums relentlessly against the rusty tin roof overhead. Two hundred of them before Azzano, and now only thirty left. For all his nightmares, he's one of the lucky ones. “Steve—”

“The way you look at me,” Steve goes on dully. He has never sounded this bleak, not even when dying of pneumonia. “When you think I’m not looking. The smile just… drops off your face. Guess I can’t blame you.”

He makes an all-encompassing gesture at himself, at the new muscles beneath the spangled outfit. He's wearing Bucky's spare jacket to hide it, but it's too small for his shoulders. “You were right. This was a dumb idea. I should just pack up and go home. Tell them I’m sick of being their dancing monkey.”

Bucky finds his tongue at last. "Steve," he says again. “Stop it. Of course I don’t hate you.” 

“How could you not?” asks Steve. “I got big and strong, and I was just prancing around on stage while your troop got decimated—”

“No, see,” says Bucky, desperation sharpening his voice. “That’s the thing. I wasn’t gonna tell you—hell, I wasn’t gonna tell anyone, but then you chose today of all days to show up in the middle of a USO dance troop and by now I really shoulda been halfway to the Austrian border—”

Steve’s expression changes abruptly. “What?”

He sits up straight, all the despair sloughing off him like a snakeskin to leave pure concentration. Bucky sighs, resigned. He knows that look. It's usually preceded by some risky half-baked idea, and rapidly followed by a great deal of violence and injury. “I stole a buncha maps from Phillips’s office. And Carter knows a guy who can fly a plane, so I was thinking—y’know, can’t abandon my buddies when I know exactly where they are—” 

Steve launches himself to his feet. Standing six foot two in that ridiculous outfit, he draws quite a number of stares. “Can we leave now?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **anonymous sent: For the drabbles thingy. Clint and Bucky #4**   
>  _Prompt 4: “Do you… well… I mean… I could give you a massage?”_

**** “You need the hospital,” Barnes announces.

It’s really quite sweet. Or it  _ would _ be sweet, if he weren’t also looming like a very large, very frowny caryatid over Clint’s Concussion Couch. For all his field experience and weird trivia knowledge, Barnes still subscribes to mid-century layman ideas about medicine, which largely consist of preventing Clint from falling asleep until they can be sure his brain isn’t going to swell up and conk out on him. Which it isn’t. Totally.

Clint attempts to express this in conventionally understood language, but all that comes out is a vague approximation of, “Don’t wanna.”

“Told you so,” says Steve. He’s curled up on the floor at the foot of the couch, mostly immobile, because both Pizza Dog and Blob Kitty have fallen asleep across his legs. “It’s not even a bad concussion, Buck.”

“Had worse,” Clint agrees, though it sounds more like  _ Huuuuurgh. _ He’s just been clipped in the skull by half a Doombot in its death throes. (Nat was fighting off the other half. It’s a long story.) “Just need. Coffee.”

Barnes is all V-shaped eyebrows and inverted-U mouth. “You’ll die if you drink coffee on a concussion.”

It’s beyond Clint in his current state to try and convince him otherwise. “Coke? Or. There’s Mountain Dew in the fridge.” He kneads at his forehead. Judging by the pain, the rims of his eye sockets have been set on fire sometime in the last twenty minutes. He decides to try his luck. “Or, y’know. You could give me a massage. For pain.”

Barnes considers this. “Hot tea,” he says at last. His frowny face recedes from view. “And a head massage.”

“Oh, God,” says Steve. He sounds so alarmed Clint nearly starts groping for his bow. “Take it back, Barton, you’re not gonna like this.”

“What?” asks Clint. His brain struggles to catch up. A head massage, even one administered by a part-cyborg ninety-year-old, sounds like absolute heaven. Then he realises, too late, that Steve has had a good deal more experience with Barnes’s idea of first-aid than he has, and if he says something is a bad idea—

Something hard and icy cold lands on his forehead, right over his bruised eyelid. It mashes into his face with all the gentleness of a marching band, then retracts again. Clint bats it away, profaning in four or five different languages. “What the  _ actual fuck _ , Barnes—”

It’s a bag of peas. “For your black eye,” Barnes informs him. “Before it swells shut. Don’t move. This is just the step one.”

“No, thanks, man, I think I’ll pass—”

Steve gives him a commiserating look from under the pile of assorted animals. “Too late, buddy. It was nice knowing you.”


	7. Chapter 7

**anonymous sent: stevebuckysam drabble 18 pretty please :)  
** _ Prompt 18: “This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.” _

“Cake,” says Steve, his brows running together in a thoughtful furrow. “Fruit cake with extra icing. His favourite.” 

Bucky sighs, surveying the messy lists and diagrams tacked up on Steve’s corkboard and joined together with bits of red string. They look like Holmes and Watson puzzling out a murder. “That’s clichéd.”

“It’s his birthday. Of course there has to be cake.”

“It’s  _ old-fashioned _ .”

“Sam’s old-fashioned,” says Steve, as if that settles everything. He's already moved on to the next item on his list. “We’ll get him champagne, too, and parrot balloons. Helium ones. And flowers. We gotta work out how to say  _ we love you _ in flower language.” He scratches his chin. “Also  _ move in with us _ and  _ be our best more-than-bro forever. _ What’s that, red roses and flax? _ ” _

Bucky looks up. “Wait, what? We’re hiding our declaration of love in the bouquet? What if he doesn’t know, uh, flower language?”

“He talks to _birds_ , Buck,” says Steve dismissively. “I’m sure he can work out a bouquet. Are you in or not?” 

This is ridiculous. Also humiliating. With a pang, Bucky remembers how suave he used to be in the forties. But he's getting desperate, and Steve's had a few more years’ experience with twenty-first century dating than he has. This might just work. Maybe.

He throws up his hands. “This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. And that’s saying something, Rogers. Of course I’m in.”

 

* * *

 

**anonymous sent: #4 for the prompt please and you already know, I want my boys. Sam, Steve, and Bucky all day everyday  
** _ Prompt 4: “Do you… well… I mean… I could give you a massage?” _

Sam doesn’t remember it’s his birthday until he pulls up outside his house and spots Steve’s bike parked along his driveway.

His first thought is that, in a characteristic expression of Depression-era frugality, Bucky still hasn’t gotten a bike of his own. His second thought is that this means Steve and Bucky have to sit plastered against each other, chest to back, whenever they drive anywhere together. His third thought is that he is noxiously, outrageously jealous, though he can’t quite make up his mind of  _ whom _ .

(Actually, his first thought is more of a squeaky, undignified  _ yay! _ Which bumps everything else down a spot, but he isn’t actually going to admit that even to himself, so the point is moot.)

As always, his favourite supersoldiers greet him on the porch with all the fervour of a litter of extremely large, extremely bashful golden retriever puppies. Sam doesn’t mind. It distracts him from his unremittingly dogless existence. Steve is holding a platter of fruit cake (from Sam’s favourite bakery, which prompts another  _ yay! _ ) with a slightly alarming number of candles smouldering on it, and Bucky lurks a step behind, his face mostly hidden in an enormous bouquet of red roses and sunflowers and carnations and other things Sam can’t identify. Steve shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Uh, happy birthday?”

“For you,” says Bucky, and promptly shoves the kaleidoscope of flowers into Sam’s arms. “Best wishes. And such.”

“Holy shit, you guys,” says Sam. He sniffs the bouquet. It’s starting to fall apart, and the arrangement is so bizarrely asymmetrical that there is no way a trained florist put it together. He makes up his mind to Google flower meanings as soon as he gets his hands on his laptop. “You didn’t have to.”

“We wanted to,” says Steve. His eyes dart towards Bucky, as if to ask,  _ What now? _ When Bucky proves unforthcoming, he adds, “We, uh. Didn’t know what else to get you. So we cleaned your house.”

“And I fed your bird,” says Bucky. He has a cockatiel balloon tied around his metal wrist, and Blob Kitty is draped across his shoulders, looking festive and grumpy in one of Sam’s baby niece’s beanie hats.

“And we restocked your fridge with OJ,” says Steve. “'Cause we drank it all last time.” 

“And later,” says Bucky, staring at his feet, “we could, uh, give you a massage.”

“After you blow out the candles,” says Steve firmly, as Sam brightens. “Or your cake’s gonna catch on fire—”

“—oh, and make a wish first,” says Bucky.

“You guys,” says Sam again, for lack of anything else to say. It’s either that or gape at them in unflattering stupefaction. “I just. I don’t. Wow.”

( _ I don’t have to make a wish _ , he was going to say,  _ ‘cause I can’t think of anything to top this. _ But a guy’s gotta keep his cards close to his chest sometimes.)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **anonymous sent: stucky, number 43, if you haven't done it? (It's the most stucky thing in the world i s2g). Alt: stucky, number 38 (the second most stucky thing). Take ur pick. If you like**
> 
> _Prompt 43: “YOU DID WHAT?!”_  
>  Prompt 48: “You fainted… straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention, you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

“You fainted,” explains the man on the bridge.

The Soldier blinks. From aching fragments, the world coalesces back into a solid whole with that golden-haloed face as the centrepiece. His head hurts. His metal fingers are furled around the hilt of a knife, the same one he remembers brandishing before he blacked out, so it appears he hasn't been disarmed in either the literal or the figurative sense of the word. He's safe, lying in the back of his getaway van, and the man on the bridge is with him.

To put a finer point on it, he’s curled up on his side with his head in the man’s lap, and the man is peering down at him with wide-eyed concern so genuine it’s almost comical.

“No,” says the Soldier, because denial is the only weapon he can think to use. “Nope.”

He pops the P, which—as dozens of despairing handlers have tried to inform him—is something only petulant adolescents do nowadays. At present, the Soldier feels very petulant, and very adolescent. “Yes,” says the man. His lips strain upwards, as if he's trying not to smile. “Straight into my arms. Really, if you wanted my attention, you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

Clutching the shreds of his dignity, the Soldier pulls his head free of the man’s cradling hands, but draws the line at trying to sit up. He dimly remembers busting his way into a HYDRA bunker—alone, which was possibly not the smartest plan—and then getting surrounded and taking a blow to the head. He also remembers a blond spectre materialising to fight back to back with him, and playing a very violent game of Frisbee in the ensuing chaos. He’d assumed it was a hallucination. But of course it wasn’t, because this guy just _has_ to turn up whenever the Soldier fucks up a mission and makes a fool of himself. It’s a law of physics or something.

“How’d we get out of there?” he asks. “They activated the self-destruct system. Thought we were trapped.”

His voice just sounds like a string of slurred syllables to him, but the blond man seems to understand him perfectly. “Oh. Turns out their so-called self-destruct system was just a really big bomb planted by the door. I tried to defuse it but I couldn’t, and there were only twenty seconds left on the timer, so I…”

The Soldier narrows his eyes. “Yes?”

For an inspirational figure straight out of the history books, the man looks impossibly shifty. “So I, uh, I dragged you into another room and then I put my shield over the bomb and then I sat on the shield and then—”

Bucky lurches bolt upright, his concussion forgotten. “You did _what_?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **cryingbuckyets sent: 44 or 49 with stevebucky**   
>  _Prompt 49: “Well, this is awkward.”_
> 
> [This is an arch-nemeses AU where Steve and Bucky didn't grow up together, but met for the first time during the events of CA:TWS—so, a similar verse to [you'll remember mercury](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8215972).]

 “Well,” says Steve. “This is… awkward.”

As adjectives go,  _ awkward _ is pretty unsatisfactory. Faced with any other Hydra agent, surrounded by oblivious civilians in the middle of the post office at lunch hour, Steve might have used another word. Like  _ emergency _ .  Or  _ going to involve a lot of bloody fucking murder.  _ Or he might have just skipped the adjective and gone straight to the verb, namely a punch to the jaw.

Except the guy trying to hold up the post office is the Winter Soldier, who keeps showing up to thwart Steve at the most inopportune moments. Like when a friend is dead or dying, or there’s a helicarrier he needs to crash, or when it’s been a long day and he simply isn’t looking his best. Like now. Now, when he’s wearing yesterday’s sweater over bermudas and running shoes, and has his hands full of grocery bags, because he was at the supermarket when Natasha tipped him off about the post office heist and he didn’t have time to go home first.

At least he isn’t covered in blood this time.

“Seriously,” he says, when the Soldier just blinks at him like a cat. “Who the hell holds up a post office? Hydra got nothing better to do?”

The Soldier’s forehead creases over for a moment. He’s not visibly armed, and his mask and goggles are gone, though he’s still rocking the zombie chic from last time: leather jacket, cargo pants, combat boots, black from head to toe. Next to Steve, he looks like some kind of death rockstar. “Not with Hydra,” he says. “Not anymore.”

“Oh,” says Steve. Again, as comprehension sets in, “Ohhhh.”

He wonders, but does not ask, if this sudden career change has anything to do with the mysterious hand that pulled him out of the Potomac. He doesn't need to make this any more awkward than it already is.  “Yeah,” says the Soldier. “Freelance.”

“Freelance what, post office burglary?”

The Soldier scrunches up his mouth in impatience, or maybe distaste. Steve never expected how expressive his face would be under the mask. “If you like. There’s an alien artefact buried under this building, left over from when the gods came. Been giving off odd heat signatures all week. If we don’t extract it soon it’s gonna blow.”

“Oh?” asks Steve, sceptical. The grocery bags bump against his hip. “Who’s _we_?”

“Me,” says the Soldier. “And you. Since you’re here. Being a nuisance, as usual."

His face—which really belongs on a runway model, not a cyborg assassin—displays exactly what he thinks of this, by means of another scrunchy frown.  “But,” Steve begins, fumbling for a valid excuse that doesn’t come down to _you literally tried to kill me a few months ago_. He brandishes his grocery bags. “The yogurt’s gonna spoil.”

The Soldier peers at the enormous carton of frozen yogurt. His eyes narrow, as if confronting a complex mathematical problem. “I guess,” he says, a tad hopefully, “we could eat it now?”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **cryobaby sent: vaaaaal. i feel like death and was hoping u could maybe write me something fluffy. u dont have to but i just lava ur writing ❤️❤️ ily**
> 
> [this instalment was brought to you by that one text post about Bucky calling Steve “Steeb” when he has a blocked nose]

“Steeb,” moans a duck voice from somewhere in the room. “Steeeeeb, you’re not s’posed to be here.”

Under the pile of blankets, knitted sweaters, and crumpled tissues, no sign of life is immediately evident. It’s a bit like exploring Mars. To investigate more closely, Steve swings his leg over the windowsill. He's coming in through the window because the door is jammed. The door is jammed because there is a complex configuration of clothes-hangers trapping the knob in place, and because Bucky Barnes is, as he always has been, a giant drama king. “I brought hot tea,” Steve announces, addressing the blanketed lump that looks most like Bucky's head. “And a laptop full of Disney movies.”

A tousled brown head emerges from under Sam’s fuzzy quilt. Two baleful blue eyes flick open. One cashmere-sleeved arm flails out from between the blankets (the other is sitting disembodied on the dresser like a giant Halloween ornament, adorned with a bright pink Get Well Soon sticker that clashes horribly with the red star). Bucky takes one look at the Thermos Steve is holding, moans again, and starts to retract into the pillow pile. “You ain’t allowed in here. You’re gonna catch it.”

“Buck, I literally haven’t sniffled once since ‘43.”

Bucky coughs piteously. He's wearing what looks like four sweaters, at least three of which are Steve’s. “’M dying. I’d will my cat to you but she hates you. I guess you can have my arm. Or my rifle.”

Right on cue, Blob Kitty flows out of a crack between two of Bucky’s fluffier pillows and puddles on the floor at Steve’s feet. She noses at Steve’s big toe, gives a disgusted mewl, and turns her back. Steve tries not to feel hurt. “Well, newsflash, I don’t want your snot-covered rifle _or_ your evil cat."

In retort, Bucky sneezes. “Bless you,” says Steve. Then he repeats it five more times, as needed, and shoves the tissue box into Bucky’s hand. “It’s just a cold. Drink the goddamn tea.”

“I don’t need tea, I need a priest to give me my last rites,” says Bucky, but he takes a sip when Steve holds the Thermos to his mouth, and then allows his forehead to flop pathetically onto Steve’s shoulder. It’s gross and sweaty, but not feverish. “Was nice knowing you, Steeb. Burn my bedding when I’m dead. That’s what they did during the plague.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever,” says Steve. He sweeps the tissues off the bed and into the bin, slides himself one limb at a time into the swathe of blankets, and pulls Sam’s quilt over them both. This involves a lot of delicate manoeuvring, seeing as Bucky is attached to his ribcage like a barnacle, and Blob Kitty has reascended to the bed and is now arranging her razor claws all over their ankles. “So, how about _Frozen?_ Or is it still too soon?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [try imagining Blob Kitty as an IRL Pusheen](http://www.pusheen.com)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i can’t find the request for this one but it was blob kitty + buckynat brotp cuddles

It’s difficult to say which of them notices him first. Natasha responds in the usual way, muscular reflexes first, then sympathetic nervous system: increased respiration, quickening pulse, her body preparing to fight or flinch or run for her fucking life.  Finally the conscious parts of her mind kick in and remind her, in a voice suspiciously similar to Sam’s, that  _ you’re safe here _ and  _ we’re all watching your back _ and  _ you’re sitting in your PJs in a blanket fort in my living room, Nat, why the hell do you still have four guns and a knife on you? _

At the same time, Therapy Snake makes an alarmed hissing noise and disappears head-first into her shirt. Coward.

She lifts the closest blanket by several millimetres, just enough to stick her eye up to the crack and peer out. It’s Barnes, of course. Who else would be ghosting through the house at three a.m.? (The more precise answer is all of them, for one reason or another, but no one turns being undead into a verb quite the way Barnes does.) He still moves like a wisp of fog, soundless and fearless, though the effect is rather ruined by the fact that he's wearing Steve’s rattiest sweatshirt and boxers and has Sam’s quilt bundled around his shoulders like a cape. There's also an indistinct glob of black fur nestled on his head, which on closer inspection transpires not to be a fashionable new hat, but a four-footed fuzzball currently attempting to skritch a hole in Barnes’s scalp.

Man and cat stop in the middle of the living room. Man peers suspiciously at the blanket fort (strategically situated between the couch and the coffee table, with excellent sightlines to all doors and windows). Cat huffs once, loses interest, and returns to its scratchpost. Man looks lost, grumpy, and a little cold.

Natasha sticks her head all the way out of the fort. “Bad night?”

Barnes blinks at her. Then he dips his chin once, a half-hearted approximation of a nod. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to risk the follicular damage that might come with dislodging his cat. Barnes is inordinately fond of his hair.

She sighs. The blanket fort is far too big for one person, in part because she is a diehard overachiever even in the middle of the night and in part because she didn’t really want to sit in it alone. “Hold on. I’ll put Therapy Snake in his hide box and then you can come in.”

Barnes puts himself by the wall and stands perfectly still while Natasha climbs out of the fort and deposits her snake in his tank. Therapy Snake immediately retreats to the dark box in his favourite corner and curls up into a tight ball, his bright beady eyes glinting between his creamy yellow coils. “I feel you, baby,” Natasha tells him solemnly.

At heart, she too is a ball python.

She crawls back into the fort and holds the door-blanket open for Barnes. After a brief hesitation he joins her, cat and all, and they don’t say another word until morning.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this one was because @sonatine and i were talking about MCU/Yuri on Ice crossovers and we thought Bucky would be fond of Yurio

Bucky has witnessed a lot of shit in his life.  Way too much shit. So, when he sees the fight start in a grubby back alley in St. Petersburg, he knows he really shouldn’t risk blowing his cover to intervene.

But honestly. The kid about to get his ass handed to him is tiny and blond, half the size of the four—no, five, God, six—thugs closing in on him; and whatever else Bucky is, he’s a creature of memory and instinct and deeply rooted Pavlovian reflexes before anything else. Besides, the kid is wearing a leopard print hoodie and a black t-shirt with an actual tiger head on the front, all glittering sequins, and no one with a fashion sense like  _ that _ deserves to get beat up in an alley.

But before he can take more than a couple steps forward, the kid swings his leg up in a balletic high kick that should not be physically possible, and nails one of the thugs in the face. His boots, Bucky notes with intense envy, also have leopard spots on them. There is the sweet crunch of a nose breaking, and the thug falls over and lands flat on his back on the pavement. Another guy swaggers forward, but Tiger Dude punches him with a hand glittering with chunky rings, and the second thug stumbles back holding his face.

Holy shit, Bucky thinks.

He’s not the only one watching. Another kid—dark-haired, undercut, almost as tiny—comes out of the Starbucks across the street with a frappuccino in each hand. He looks around, spots Tiger Dude applying the toes of his boot to a third thug’s crotch, sighs, and leans back against the storefront to watch. His expression is a careful construct of bored indulgence.

Bucky isn’t convinced. He’s been here, okay. The ferocious adoration is written large on every plane of Undercut’s face. 

The thugs run off, blubbering and clutching various body parts. Tiger Dude checks his hair in a nearby window, spots Undercut, and waves him over with a shit-eating grin. Undercut tugs Tiger Dude’s hood back up—it’s fallen down during the tussle—and hands one of the frappes over. Tiger Dude takes a large slurp and gets whipped cream on his nose. Then they walk off together, hand in hand.

Bucky comes to the abrupt realisation that he is extremely homesick. Alone on the street once more, he fishes out his phone and sends a string of texts: 

_> stevie omg i just saw this tiny kid take out like 6 thugs_  
_ > he was literally you circa 1935  
_ _ > but like, badass and with fashion sense_

Steve responds almost at once. _You take that back about my fashion sense, you large lug_ , followed by three middle-finger emojis.

Bucky smiles, pockets his phone, and heads into the Starbucks to get a frappe for himself.


	13. Chapter 13

“What the hell,” says Sam. “It was my turn to wear the Steve shirt.”

Bucky, aka Public Menace No. 1, looks down at himself. Steve’s grey jogging t-shirt clings to the solid barrel of muscle that is his chest and torso (now with an extra inch or two of post-breakfast Squish), where its seams appear to be having something of a crisis. “Really?”

Steve may be easy prey for Bucky’s large-eyed lost-boy pout, but Sam isn’t. “You had it two days ago. Come on, man, stick to the schedule. It doesn’t even fit you.”

“It doesn’t fit Steve either,” Bucky points out.

“True,” says Sam. “But guess who it does fit? Me. I was looking forward to being really fucking handsome at the VA today, so give it over.”

“No,” says Bucky in his deadest, most toneless voice. “Your level of handsomeness is a constant. You don’t need the shirt. You don’t need any shirts.”

He shambles out of the kitchen before Sam can decide whether he’s just been complimented, insulted or flirted with. “Well, fuck you too,” he says aloud to empty air. “This means war.”

It’s almost worth forgoing the Steve shirt for the very interesting shade of rose Bucky turns when he sees Sam wearing his red henley instead.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aaaand this is the last one for now: an alternate take on the blob kitty origin story. this is actually a new-ish ficlet that has never been posted before, as a thank-you to all of you who've been following along and commenting <3

Within a week of his arrival in Bucharest, Steve’s shadowing efforts are rewarded. His first glimpse of Bucky is a shaggy figure in a hoodie, unexpectedly cuddly, browsing the fruit stalls in the marketplace with a large cat on his shoulder.

A cat. Huh. Steve hadn’t been expecting that.

By the end of the second week he knows Bucky knows that he’s here. He finds this out by means of a stifling weight on his chest at three in the morning and a quartet of sharp knives digging into his chest through his sweatshirt; and he lurches awake groping for his shield, thinking of assassins and killer robots and ancient demonic superstitions.

The object on his chest, however, transpires to be none of the above. It is a cat. Bucky’s cat, to be exact: a fat grey thundercloud with a nick in its left ear and a bushy tail that puts Steve in mind of a feather duster. It stares at him through baleful green eyes, and pokes a paw into his face. “Hey,” Steve breathes. And then, to the rest of the non-feline shadows in the room, “Bucky?”

No answer. The cat is unaccompanied. Steve pets it absently, and receives a sharp nip to the hand in reward. Then it hisses at him and disappears through his window.

 

 

The next night, the cat appears to him again in the cold twilight of the hour before dawn, and bestows four bloody scratches on his neck.

The night after that, it drops a dead snake on his face.

The night after _that_ , it tries to make off with his shield, and actually gets all the way down to the lobby of the motel before he catches up. The ensuing tug-of-war is highly embarrassing, and makes it to the front page of the local paper.

After that, Steve retreats into strategizing mode, and is prepared with kitty treats and a ball of yarn when Blob Kitty manifests again. (He calls her that because, what with the stumpy legs and the explosion of thick fur, she resembles nothing so much as a bowling ball. Probably Bucky calls her something else.) He keeps a safe distance until she’s eaten her fill and has melted into a purring puddle on his armchair, then sneaks up and tucks the note he’s written into her collar. She barely even looks up.

> _ BUCKY – _
> 
> _ If you’re trying to murder me by proxy, it’s not working. Do it yourself. _
> 
> _ Also, I am fully armed with catnip, rubber mice, and scratching posts. Fair warning that your advance scout may soon be subverted to my cause. _
> 
> _ ♡ S.R. _

Blob Kitty _prrs_ at him, steps on his face for a few minutes, and slips back out into the street.

 

 

The next night, she doesn't show up alone. Steve grins at the man-shaped shadow on the fire escape as the cat makes a beeline for his pillow and starts squishing her nose into his sleep-mussed hair, _mrrp_ -ing all the while. “About time,” he says.

“Don’t steal my cat,” says Bucky sulkily, and starts unpacking toiletries and pajamas from his duffel bag.

**Author's Note:**

> maybe the real treasure was the blob kitties we met along the way
> 
> [dirtybinary on tumblr](http://dirtybinary.tumblr.com) | [my second book will be out soon, check that out maybe](http://valeaida.tumblr.com/post/162432410621/everyone-has-a-secret-to-keep-alone-disgraced)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] there is no terminus, only suitcases](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11398647) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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